Page:United States Reports 502 OCT. TERM 1991.pdf/671

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Cite as: 502 U. S. 491 (1992)

513

Stevens, J., dissenting

vailing practice imposed any special burden on covered jurisdictions. For example, in this fiscal year the Attorney General has processed over 17,000 preclearance requests, and has approved over 99 percent of them without any undue delay.6 It is, therefore, simply hyperbole for the Court to suggest that if we adopted the Attorney General’s position in this case “neither state nor local governments could exercise power in a responsible manner within a federal system.” Ante, at 507.7 6

Tr. of Oral Arg. 27. The Attorney General’s percentage has undergone little change even though the number of submissions has increased over time. For example, when Allen v. State Bd. of Elections, 393 U. S. 544 (1969), was decided, the Department of Justice had received 251 submissions from States covered under § 5 and had approved over 99 percent of the submissions. Id., at 549, n. 5. Figures available in 1978 indicated that the Department processed 1,800 submissions annually, and had approved over 98 percent of those submissions. Dougherty County Bd. of Ed. v. White, 439 U. S., at 41. 7 In the past, various Members of the Court have objected to the types of changes that require preclearance under § 5 in covered States, and have predicted that the Court’s construction of the statute would leave it without boundaries. In Perkins v. Matthews, for example, Justice Harlan expressed the view that the Court was mistaken in holding that annexations are within the scope of § 5 and that the Court had gone too far in its interpretation of “with respect to voting”: “Given a change with an effect on voting, a set of circumstances may be conceived with respect to almost any situation in which the change will bear more heavily on one race than on another. In effect, therefore, the Court requires submission of any change which has an effect on voting.” 400 U. S., at 398 (opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part). Similarly, Justice Powell, taking the view in Dougherty that a “personnel rule” should not fall within the scope of § 5 as the Court had held, was concerned that “if the Court truly means that any incidental impact on elections is sufficient to trigger the preclearance requirement of § 5, then it is difficult to imagine what sorts of state or local enactments would not fall within the scope of that section.” 439 U. S., at 54 (dissenting opinion) (footnote omitted). The fears the Court expresses today, see ante, at 507, are no more likely to be realized than those expressed by Justice Harlan and Justice Powell years ago.